FROM THE TRENCHES

LOUVAIN TO THE AISNE, THE FIRST RECORD OF AN EYE-WITNESS

BY

GEOFFREY WINTHROP YOUNG

LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
1 ADELPHI TERRACE W.C.

I wish to express my obligation to the Proprietors of the "Daily News" for permission to use material contributed to their columns.

First Published October, 1914.

CONTENTS

FROM THE TRENCHES

[CHAPTER I]

The Outbreak. In and Out of Paris.

On Tuesday, 28th of July, I returned from the Alps; the weather conditions had been arctic and the climbing more than usually exciting. During a bathe in the Lake of Geneva, which has become the customary end of the climbing season, I remember saying to my companion, "Well, this is the end of all sensation for the year. Now for the usual dull winter's work."

On Thursday I volunteered to go with the Servian Army as War Correspondent for the Daily News, but the European conflagration was already too imminent. On Sunday, it was arranged that I should go to Paris to join the French Army.

The journey started normally. But at Newhaven it was startling to see three English travellers turn and rush off the boat at the last minute. It was the first and unforgettable sign of the break-up in our order of life. To take a ticket and start a journey no longer meant the inevitable procession to its end. We were beginning the life of the unexpected; when event and interruption was to take the place of the decent ordering of hours by convention and system.

On the boat were only men; older men called up to the colours. Most of them were fathers of families. One man sat in tears over a photograph of his five children spread out before him. Some had lived all their lives in England. "Well, you're an Englishman, at any rate," said the steward to an obvious cockney. But he was French, though he could scarcely speak it. A very old priest was returning, after twenty years, to "die among his soldier children" in a French frontier village—"or perhaps my grand-children," he corrected, with a faint smile.

As we neared Calais the cloud began to pass. The men clustered and spoke together: a few started singing. When I had crossed a few days before, the quay had been lined with the usual cheering children, and a few condescending tourists had waved back. Now there was a line of soldiers in the same place. Our passengers rushed to the side and cheered them. A number of French cruisers guarded the entrance. It was the first real proof that we were passing into the facts of war. The odd nightmare feeling of those few first days, that witnessed the collapse of the structure of civilisation upon which our lives had hitherto rested, intensified. The war was true after all; not merely a terrible darkness of sensation into which we kept waking up, with a shrinking discomfort, whenever our attention came back from reading some book or following some ordinary chain of thought.

At Calais there had been no regular train traffic for three days. A number of travellers who had got as far as Calais on previous days decided to return by our boat to England. The porters stood round vaguely, with the distracted strained look that we learned to associate later with the presence of the war atmosphere. I discovered to my surprise a train waiting in the station with steam up:—it was "Lord Kitchener's Special," prepared to carry him on his way to Egypt. But Lord Kitchener at the last moment had not come, for reasons that have since proved amply sufficient. By various persuasive arguments we at last convinced the undecided station-master that as the line had been cleared the express might run through; and we reached Paris in four hours; the "last" unofficial express during the war.

The Gare du Nord was empty of porters; but the long lines of platform were piled ten feet high down the centre with enormous trunks—the abandoned luggage of escaping tourists.

Outside the station the approaches were barred by barriers, where dragoons demanded passes from every foot passenger. Troops poured past, starting for their different centres of concentration. The suburban traffic had ceased. The streets were full of people kept in the town against their will by the demands of the mobilisation.

Paris had not yet settled down. It was seething in those first three days of panic that seemed throughout Europe to follow the declaration of war. More an atmospheric feeling than a state with definite symptoms. People, for these days, seemed to be moving and speaking semi-consciously, with the nervous suggestion in their faces that they expected something novel and shocking to happen at any second. The supposed German shops and houses were being wrecked and looted. Every now and then there was a hurried rush of feet through the street, as some suspect was hunted or maltreated. The spy-hunting mania seems to have been a universal infection during this time. The disorderly elements in the big towns got the upper hand for the moment and the cold-blooded brutality of these silent man-hunts was to me infinitely more shocking than the sight and sound of the more terrible destruction on the battlefields. It was the first growl of the beast that we had let loose, the savage animal in man waking for our purposes of war. Under my window was a great courtyard, in which hundreds of German and Austrian men, women and children were confined for their protection. They had to sleep on the stones in the open air; and it was a pitiable thing, while the crowds outside the gate were execrating and hustling those who were thrust in to join them, to hear them singing French songs and cheering for France. Most of them were French by education and sympathy, and only German by extraction.

The apache element, which had been encouraged by the thinning out of the Gendarmerie for military service to make patriotism the cover for convenient looting and brutality, was soon brought into order. Cavalry pickets patrolled the streets in the evening; a curious sight, their horses trampling on the pavement of the Rue de la Paix. The worst haunts were raided; many hundreds were arrested, and the police in large motor wagons ran through deserted quarters, stopping and pouncing in batches upon suspected passers-by. The civil hand had released its hold, and it was a day or two before the new military administration could get a firm grip. Government offices were in a not unnatural state of confusion—they had been weakened by the withdrawal of a large proportion of their effective staff, at the same moment that they became responsible for an enormous mass of novel duty. The civilian, under military government, found himself of a sudden unable to move or exist without official permits. The whole social structure had to be reorganised, and the offices were crowded with jostling individuals asking for permissions and explanations which the over-worked officials were unable to supply. One of the most painful memories of the war was the sight of refined-looking Austrians and Germans, men and women, artists and writers, with the puzzled hunted expression of people in a nightmare, forced to appeal in public to hurrying footmen and office boys for some indulgence that might allow them to continue to earn their living.

The guiding principle of most public offices at this time, not only in Paris, seemed to be that of sending people backward and forward until their endurance should wear out. With what should happen to them in case they did not comply with all the new regulations the military outlook was not concerned. Every effort was to be concentrated on the preparation for war. The civilian in such an atmosphere has no further rights. If we permit, as nations, the whole civilised order of existence to be pitched into a whirlpool of primitive passions, we must expect to have to scuffle personally for our life-belts.

On the third day of my stay in Paris the situation was indescribably relieved by the declaration of war between England and Germany. The rush on the banks stopped. Prices fell. Money became easier, and the crowd of British and other tourists, sitting on their boxes in nervous lines before the Consulates, diminished. The growing hostility of the Parisians to ourselves disappeared. The organization in the responsible offices, in so far as the public was concerned, began to assume some order.

Night and day the regiments passed through and round the city. The mobilisation was rapid and extremely orderly. There was no apparent hitch. We became confident that the prophecies that France would be found unprepared would be proved totally wrong. Gradually the requisitioned cabs and trams began to reappear in the streets. The women quietly stepped into the men's places as ticket-collectors, etc. With reduced numbers and closed shops, a graver population took up its ordinary life.

It was very soon apparent that no official correspondents were to be allowed with the French or British forces. A large proportion of the remaining officials, not to say ourselves, could have been saved infinite bother if the intention had been declared from the first. After a week spent without profit in ante-chambers and bureaus, I decided to get through to Belgium, where there seemed to be better possibility of approaching actual events. Chance helped me to secure a more picturesque fashion of return than I could have hoped for.

Saturday, August 10th.

I am just back from the first, and "probably the last," visit that a civilian will be able to pay to the French frontier until the situation has considerably developed.

To have to wait a day in a queue to obtain a permit to leave, another to secure a ticket, and even a third to confirm it by getting a definite seat on a numbered train, can discourage the most patient. The miracle of deliverance, however, took place; and it was brought about by the agency of a chance meeting with a genial chauffeur. There followed an introduction to his employers, a party of Belgian officers returning to their own army, and an amiable invitation to evade some of the weariness of the irregular train journey by taking a lift.

That this was extended beyond all limits contemplated by military regulations must be attributed to a reluctance to turn out on a dark, wet night, in unknown districts, one of a nation whose intervention, as I was assured, has contributed much to the magnificent spirit with which the Belgian troops have supported the first rush of the "invincible machine."

We left Paris with the Boulevards almost as crowded as ever, but with half the colour and light gone, and a note of unusual gravity in the aspect and talk of the moving stream.

Out through the long, dark suburbs, with the last signal, the flare of the searchlight from the Eiffel Tower, blinking its messages across the clouds high above our heads in front. In the first two miles we were stopped half-a-dozen times; business-like question and answer in quick, suppressed voices. Then the checks decreased as we ran out into the dark fields, though the flash of light upon arms, the challenge and halt came still at bridge and corner. The 'word of the day' passed us at only reduced pace through the larger pickets, but the less well-informed solitary sentry had to be more fully satisfied; and the more, the further from Paris.

Then longer and longer intervals of tremendous racing, unchecked; for the car drove at full speed, and there is no peace traffic! The light of the Eiffel Tower disappeared behind, but there was still the consciousness, in the most remote darkness, that above us darted ceaselessly the continuous stream of wireless messages linking the brain of the army in the little room in unseen Paris with every movement of the vast protecting arms that already lie outstretched to guard France. Through Senlis, Compiègne, St. Quentin, and, at last, Cambrai. It was only possible to calculate the probable towns by the intervals of time, for in each case we were turned off on to side circuits.

When I had passed south to Paris a few days before, on a more westerly line, the country had still seemed inhabited, though by a mixed race: crowds of little red and blue soldiers resting, marching, crammed in troop trains, and knots of men and women at the village corners, or staring at the gates of the huge deserted factories.

Now it seemed an empty land. All the life had passed east into the great war cloud. Only now and again the flash of the lamp on a cluster of boys and older men, sitting or lying by the road; the non-combatants of the villages from the war region tramping west, with blue check bundles tied on the handles of their reaping hooks, to earn what they could, for the later repair of their losses, by helping to harvest. Need for it, too, as the sight of the immense fields of grain, unreaped or half reaped, yellowing the lonely fields of the uninhabited country, suggest ruin to the traveller passing in the train.

Before Cambrai we passed under a thicker darkness of cloud, and met a torrent of rain that for the rest of the night and morning hid everything but the glint of the lamps on falling drops or the more vivid gleam of fixed bayonets.

As we neared the frontier the country seemed to become populous again. The cottages had lights; lights in the fields and through the trees. Only, as we passed, the strangeness increased, for the population had come from a different planet. Quiet cottages, with the glow of uniforms through the wet panes, fields with a few tireless peasant women, helped by good-humoured soldiers, using even the darkness for a desperate effort to get in the forsaken crops. The sight of arms and wagons seemed all the less fitting in the quiet villages because there was no suggestion of war.

One picture stands out vividly; the glare of the lights through the rain on a sentry motionless on guard, while a dozen peasant women, tired doubtless from the day's reaping, slept in his charge, lying under the ridge of the field where they had been working.

Beyond Cambrai I was not at liberty to note our direction or record any details—a natural condition.

In fact, there would be little to record; for the night was a continuance of sounds, of lights, of moving unseen men and horses; and of sudden challenges, coming out of the darkness through the rush of rain. Only I may add that in one village our welcome was marked by a different French intonation as the men gathered round us, and a Belgian advance patrol exchanged jokes with my companions.

Our route from Cambrai, as a matter of fact, took us to Valenciennes, where the Belgian officers left me, hurrying to Maubeuge, while I returned by car to Douai.

In the grey of the morning I emerged, passing north of Douai, and now without my companions. As we raced west, still through rain, we passed again into deserted countries. The great machine had done its work. The mobilisation was complete. The dotted sentries, gradually changing from the smart field soldier to the paternal reservist squeezed into a uniform—or partial uniform, seemed the only jetsam of the coloured turmoil of the early week.

The crawling railway, the American ladies complaining of the slow trains and closed buffets, brought us back to ordinary life. Officials, struggling to make us take their passports and their war-regulations seriously, failed to revive any reality of impression.

The war frontier, in rain and darkness, was drifting back into the vague excitement of newspaper reports.

The separation by nationalities was in full progress. France was being cleared of all strangers. The consuls, for reasons not clear, were advising all British residents to return to England at once. The chief sufferers were the children, boys at school in France, children left for visits or cures with French families or in boarding houses. Before I reached Folkestone there must have been at least fifteen such small strays who had had to be adopted and looked after during the succeeding stages of the journey.

[CHAPTER II]

The First Days in Brussels

Restarting almost immediately, I crossed to Ostend. On the way there were the usual reassuring but unrecordable sights of the sentinel cruisers and busy submarines that made these frequent passages seem, after later weeks in the war countries, like an escape into a comfortable atmosphere of home.

At Ostend a party of efficient St. John Ambulance nurses with whom I had travelled were received with delightful enthusiasm, and free lemonade, by the Belgian soldiers.

Brussels proved a contrast after Paris. The panic days, which took a milder form here in spite of, or because of, the greater proximity of danger, had passed. The townsfolk were absolutely calm, the shops open, the life, except for the absence of means of traffic, undisturbed.

Only at intervals, as the chance of the German occupation increased, and the news diminished, there would come over the city for a few hours, one of those electric restless waves which we got to know as signs of approaching danger. They arose from no definite news. The crowds repeated no rumours. It was merely an uneasy feeling in the air. Something had happened far off, and like the unseen fall of a heavy stone in water the ripple reached and spread over the city, that yet had no definite information to disturb it.

Brussels, Monday.

In addition to the well-deserved enthusiasm with which Belgian heroism in arms has been greeted throughout civilised Europe, something must be said of the success with which the extraordinary demands have been met by the departments of the civil administration of Belgium.

During the last few days I have been in contact with a variety of administrative offices in the capitals of three of the belligerent Powers. In one country it seems as yet unrecognised that exceptional conditions demand exceptional organisation. In another there is frank confusion, due to the withdrawal of the majority of the efficient administrative staff to the war and the concentration of the remainder solely on military requirements. Only in Brussels has it been recognised in time that the civil life of a country, properly controlled, is as important to success as any section of the work of mobilisation, and that it is not sufficient to proclaim a state of war and leave everything to an already over-worked military organisation.

Some genius (we know now it was Burgomaster Max) must have been behind the details of city administration here, for in their way they have been as successful in maintaining public confidence as the personality of the mountaineer King has been in inspiring magnificent enthusiasm in his army. The streets are kept orderly, retail trade is almost normal, railway traffic has been rarely interfered with by the immense task of mobilisation; the complications of travellers and passports are simplified and dealt with efficiently and considerately; the Press control is effective but courteous; the hospitals are admirably organised; and the crowds are kept from the stations, on the arrival of wounded or prisoners.

All civil organisations are made use of, and even the Boy Scouts are doing excellent work for all branches, without the error—increasing across the border—of considering themselves semi-combatants. The result is that though the crisis, after the first few days, is being met in all the capitals with gravity and quiet resolution, Brussels—the most immediately threatened—remains a model of civic life under strict but considerate administration.

The moral, if any, is that even in actual war nations are only the weaker for having to send the whole of their manhood to the front. To convert the whole community, with its varied forces of activity, into a single military machine, is to make the machine itself less effective.

Brussels, Tuesday.

I have been given to-day every facility to inspect the excellent organisation for the care of the wounded. A noticeable feature at the central office is the extent to which amateur help is made use of in organising, and the efficiency and open mind with which unexpected contingencies are met and suggestions considered.

(Later a growing amount of the unqualified "Red Cross" help was found to be open to the same objections that were made to it as the result of our own experience in the Boer War.)

If experience in Paris and Brussels can be turned to account, the British authorities should pay attention to the organisation of private motor-cars lent to the force, to make them of real service. A large proportion are apt to race about without purpose or serviceable return—the usual difficulty with a crowd of enthusiastic would-be helpers.

The prisoners at Bruges confirm the impression that the commissariat arrangements of the advance guard of the invading German columns was very defective, owing to the unexpected resistance. The nature of the wounds bears out the reports of inexpert German shooting. A great number of the Belgian soldiers brought back from the front are wounded below the knee, and a smaller proportion in the scalp.

The Bruges authorities are most considerate in allowing books and games to be sent to the prisoners of war, and letters to be sent and received. (We were permitted to send down dozens of packs of cards etc., as a distraction for the prisoners.)

The population remains completely calm, even at a time when the next few days may decide their fate. The passage of a German aeroplane yesterday aroused only momentary curiosity. (Every day at about five o'clock the aeroplanes circled over the town. We got to look for them. Almost every night also a bright planet, the "Brussels star" was watched by interested crowds, who took it for a "Zeppelin.")

I witnessed to-day the feeding of some 10,000 children of men at the front. The distribution was excellently organised. Later I saw the distribution of vegetables to the necessitous.

These days of anxious waiting are taken with quiet resolution and much good humour.

Brussels, Wednesday.

The gallantry of the Belgian resistance has astonished the world. It has surprised the Belgians themselves. It would be a mistake to look for its source only in the reconstitution of the Army, a matter of the last few years; or to find in it a justification of war, or a plea for national military service as the regenerator of racial vigour.

The war is only the opportunity for the expression of a new Belgian democratic spirit. The new service conditions have been merely one of the agencies by which the idea of the individual right to a greater share in self-government, and the idea of the necessary condition for such government, national independence, have been disseminated.

If the Belgians are fighting heroically, it is because they are fighting for an independence which means not simply a national flag and a coloured space on the map, but individual liberty. They are defending, each man for himself and his neighbour, a responsible share in an increasingly popular Government. The inspiration of the national resistance has been the consciousness in each man of his share of liberty already gained. This democratic spirit has given life and vivid purpose to the military machine.

For the time all difference of party is sunk in securing the primary condition of liberty, racial independence, and the deliverance from the threat of that greatest enemy of freedom and individual enterprise, the military autocracy of Prussia. For the time, that can be the only conscious idea. But the liberal and more intellectual elements must be rejoicing in the realisation that the splendid effect of the new spirit is already justifying the democratic movement by which a share of popular responsibility has been gained in the past. They may well be looking forward to a time when the people will be considered to have earned by their heroism in arms a yet greater part in their own government.

The association of M. Vandervelde with the ministry has done much to identify the new spirit of democracy with the central idea of national existence. It is symbolical of the fact that the cause of Belgium is the cause of her people. An ardent advocate of peace and international friendship, he is known to have been one of the most resolutely convinced that, in this crisis of her fate, Belgium could be content with no formal protest, that she must fight for her independence to the last man. (It remains for history to emphasise the measure of political wisdom that the King showed at this crisis, in strengthening the influence of his own resolution, never to allow a free passage to the Germans, by the inclusion in the councils of the nation, of a personality politically antagonistic, but inspired by a patriotism and intellectual power second to none.)

In a country hitherto supposed to have been exceptionally under the influence of clerical domination it is significant to note the very small part that the Church has taken in the time of great emotional strain. In few of the organisations, civil and military, preparatory and corrective, established to meet the crisis, has the Church taken the lead.

Even the Boy Scouts, as a small instance, who loom large in the administrative life of Brussels for the time being, and who have hitherto been divided into hostile camps by Church and lay divisions, have sunk their differences, and are absorbed into the non-sectarian and civil machinery. It will be interesting to see what effect the loss of grip of the Church at this crucial moment may have upon her position when the new Belgian national spirit, confirmed by trial, can turn its energies again to problems of government and personal liberty.

The renaissance, or rather reassertion, is not confined to men. Women are taking a prominent part, and that not only in replacing men in subordinate work. It has not been elsewhere stated, but I have been assured by several of the wounded that much of the power of resistance in the Liége forts is due to the women of the town of Liége, who twice a day risk their lives in visiting the forts, bringing provisions and new heart.

With such wives and mothers there is little reason to fear that the new spirit will be limited to one generation, or can be accounted for as merely the reaction from a war fever. The war will but harden it into manhood.

[CHAPTER III]

The Belgian Engagements: Eghezee, Haelen

In a country, or town, under war conditions, all the usual facilities of civilisation are suspended. Post, telegraph and train cease, so far as civilians are concerned. Trams, carriages and automobiles are required for military purposes. Movement out of, or even within, a town is practically stopped. Not only are the countries sorted out by nationalities, but even each town and village. A strange face is an object of suspicious inquiry. A stranger finds it difficult to stay at places where he is; it is all but impossible for him to leave them. Permits of a particular kind are needed for any journey; and these are constantly changing. The precautions are, of course, necessary, especially to counteract an elaborate spy-system, such as that of the Germans. They place, however, immense difficulties in the way of war correspondence. To get the necessary permits for motor travel, the only method of safe passage for a correspondent, is a matter of much time and difficulty. When they are obtained, there remains to find a car still unrequisitioned, and the services of a driver free from military service and of absolutely sound nerves. In this I was exceptionally fortunate. To "Lèon the chauffeur" is due the success which attended my first efforts to get near the battle line, our pleasant reception in almost all cases there, and our not infrequent escapes from awkward situations. I was able to make some small return in the rescue of his jolly family of babies from Brussels on the morning of the German entry.

Our first excursion towards the actual fighting was a race down the Belgian lines as far as Namur, to visit the French troops. They had then just reached the Meuse, and were lined, holding the bank towards Dinant.

Liége had fallen. A few forts were said to be holding out; but communications were cut off.

Brussels, Friday.

A dash down the fighting lines to the south to-day showed us at points along the route signs of the fierce little fights which have taken place. The Belgians have held their positions magnificently.

Our car was stopped every few miles to convey wounded. In these hot days the troops, lying waiting along the trenches, have been greatly suffering from the sun. The Belgian army cap is highly unpractical. We carried a load of some five thousand handkerchiefs, which were distributed, as well as the usual journals and cigarettes.

There were intervals of sunlit fields—then masses of dark uniformed troops. Occasionally chains and wire entanglements appeared suddenly through the trees by the wayside.

French troops—jolly fellows, fit and in great spirits—were in Namur. The sight of cyclists returning from the little victory at Eghezee, garlanded with flowers, was tremendously acclaimed.

As we returned in the exquisite summer night we kept passing the shadows of moving troops in the thin darkness. Three times we heard the sound of sabots and singing, where the peasants and children were gathered round the priests, under the trees, in supplicatory services to the Virgin. As a contrast, twice again during the rush home through the night there was a flash and report from a nervous sentry, and one bullet struck our car.

The Belgian army lay along the line Diest, Tirlemont, Jodoigne, stretching towards Namur. The Headquarters were at Louvain. It covered Brussels, and at the same time anticipated a flanking movement on the north, by Hasselt. The main body occupied field trenches and forts protected by wire entanglements. It was continually harried by the countless bodies of roving Uhlans, and suffered considerably from the heat, as it lay unoccupied in the trenches. It had done magnificently in the forts; how would it do in the field? It was a time of waiting, of small distracting engagements. None of us knew where the real stroke would fall.

I spent the next few days at Louvain and in various villages on the lines, visiting the wounded in the cottages and shelters.

Thursday.

Barricades and guards on every road. The country absolutely at peace. The peasants working at the crops. But "the Prussians"—for we do not speak of "Germans"—are pressing us on the north; they are threatening and breaking in on the south. The first menaces, but the second may compel our retreat on Antwerp.

As we run out of Brussels down the shady avenues we are blocked by little mazes of tram-cars, dragged across the road. Further on, at every corner, crossing and hamlet, there are barriers of waggons, of driven logs or piled trees. From these the Civil Guard threaten with levelled guns. Dangerous citizens, in mediæval hats; they loose off on suspicion, and are as zealous as most amateurs. They will run on to a roof to shoot at an aeroplane 2,000 feet above them, regardless of damage that may be done by their falling bullets.

Further from the town the uniforms get more patchy; a bowler hat with the colours of Belgium round it is one of the smartest insignia. In the hamlets we have the peasants in blouses; but with business-like rifles, readily handled. Good fellows; stern on their job; but, once satisfied, ready to laugh back and exchange news. And everywhere ubiquitous jolly children, scrambling about, even on the barriers behind the bayonets. A little blue monster, with a large bottle, hopped and chuckled with glee as a surly guard all but fired on us from mere boredom.

We are racing down the line to Namur. Small engagements with Uhlans are of hourly occurrence to-day in the domestic-looking fields. The châteaux are deserted. Everyone has an anxious eye on the horizon.

My red ensign is saluted cheerily by the soldiers, but it has to be explained to the sturdy peasant guards. An officer stops me to tell me that I am an Englishman, and to explain that he is riding on a horse this morning captured from the Germans. The German horses are good; but the Belgians ride better.

We are practically among the Namur defences. The challenges come every two minutes, or less. The fields are scarred with modern "forts"; great wire entanglements, twisted boughs, and red and yellow trenches, sometimes roofed with the new-cut crops. Little bodies of soldiers, small, wiry, intelligent men and boys, with pleasant faces already rough with exposure, crowd round to chat and to welcome the cigarettes and newspapers.

"There has been a skirmish here," they tell us; "Two prisoners are in that cottage"; "Three wounded in the church"; and again and again they ask, "Where are the English?" and "How many are the French?" Ah, if we knew! For the Belgian army has played the hero in fort and open field; but many know they are hard-pressed. Our talk is of the demoralisation of the Germans, and of their hunger when captured.

In the middle of a little green wood, sheltered from aeroplanes, suddenly we are in a fort. Vicious guns are trained on to a cottage-hedge in full flower, that has been left standing to screen them for the time. Close beside them, some twenty boys are bathing in a shady pool. But they are curiously quiet. The chances of fight and death are too near. And, as in all wars, there are terrible stories growing of the savagery of the enemy.

Dark, waspish little soldiers lie seemingly at haphazard through the fields, and they fill the streets of Namur. The town is oddly still. Even the huge masonry of the fortress, hanging above the beautiful wooded gorge of the Meuse, seems to share in a suppressed, shifting quiet of expectancy.

We wheel out of the town, this time not to see again our French friends, but away to where the pressure is closest. Only last night an audacious German detachment of some 300 pressed within a few miles of the town, at Eghezee, and paid for its folly. Taking possession of the Chateau of Boneff, they looted the house, and sat down to cook rice on the stubble slope by the road. An airman marked them down. A small body of Belgians crept along the road, from Namur, "on all fours," occupied the trenches already prepared in the potato slope opposite—finding no sentries or outposts—and swept the detachment at close range. Prisoners, dead, and wounded, few were able to retreat; but the remainder had some revenge a few hours later on a rash cyclist contingent of Belgians which followed them too far.

While I walked the field the horses were still being charred and buried, the saddlery and cooking pots collected.

Cavalry patrols of dark, hard-bitten little soldiers speckled the country round. A careworn young lieutenant arrested me the first time. He hardly attended to the papers, rolling a cigarette and murmuring courteously and constantly: "There are so many spies about."

As we pushed on and out on field tracks for a further view, the car appeared to materialise a succession of cantering patrols out of the empty sunlit spaces of fields. Some were courteous: some not. But all, fortunately, had more serious business to attend to in the end.

At last we spied a more stealthy line of jogging helmets circuiting behind trees far ahead. This time we decided that arrest, even after a race, would be the lesser risk to take. We turned and spurted back, our doubts confirmed by seeing two or three unexpected lines of dots concentrating upon us or our pursuers. We spun through them and back on to the larger road. A few shots heard later, a long way behind, gave us the feeling of having acted as a convenient decoy for at least one party of the dreaded Uhlans.

Our next arrest, shortly afterwards, was by a fierce-looking commandant, on an exceptionally fine horse. He was softened by the red ensign and the success of his own attempts to talk English. We agreed that it was difficult to make certain when we were or were not well within the front, since the two forces were "all in and out along here." He, too, wished to know "Where are the English?" He had captured two dragoons that day with his own hand. Some of his troops had the metal German lances slung on their shoulders.

On our straight run back to Namur, by entanglements and trenches and constant challenges, we watched with pleasure an aeroplane circling above the tremendous hill fortress; certainly, we thought, a Belgian, because of its low flight.

Half-an-hour later, as I was getting food in the lively centre of the town, there came the now familiar rush of the highly-strung crowd. In a small cart, supported by four workmen, an old, respectably-dressed shop-keeper was being drawn to the hospital with shattered legs and terribly wounded head. He had been struck down in the street by the explosion of a dynamite hand-grenade, flung from the aeroplane which we had watched circling against the sunset. The senseless, wanton savagery of war.

Our return in the dark seemed likely to be sensational, for rumour had it that the Prussians were pressing in again on the north near Wavre. Up to Wavre we merely had the not infrequent incident of a guard, who had forgotten to light his lamp to stop us, trying to repair his omission by firing after our tail-lamp.

At Wavre, in the half-lit street, we met stretchers passing through the mute groups of men and children, a grim sign of near conflict.

Here a genial commandant stopped me for a talk. He had been at Eghezee, and was now on his way to "receive" a small German column that was pushing in on the east under cover of night. A surprise had been arranged by the Belgians.

He brought me up the road north-east from Wavre. We left the car under dark trees; and he directed me to a hillock on the right. After an age of waiting, little dispersed flashes and reports came from the hollow in the dark in front. The Germans were getting into touch. It was the first time I had heard the mitrailleuse, like the ripping of rough canvas.

Answering flash and snarl came from a rough semicircle of shadow in front and on the south side of them. Larger guns came into action on the north, muffled behind slopes. There is little to see by day in a modern battle unless one takes part. Nothing to see at night. I was due back. When I left the commandant, to return through Wavre, the stretchers were passing through empty streets.

It was not yet apparent what line the German northern armies were about to adopt for their main advance. The Uhlan screen prevented exact reconnoitring. We were aware that the French troops were coming up; and there seemed to be signs that they intended either to throw across a number of regiments to assist the Belgians east and south of Brussels, or to form a continuous line with the Belgian army on a curve from Diest to Namur. The latter plan would have forced a great battle in the neighbourhood of Genappe, south of Waterloo. At the same time I was aware that the Government were anxious both on account of the small numbers of French crossing the frontier and at the apparent slowness of their advance. We did not know of the strategy that had concentrated the French armies upon Alsace-Lorraine, or, consequently, of the time necessary for the alteration of the balance of troops towards the north. It was rumoured, as it appears now among the Germans also, that the British force would either advance by Brussels, and hold a position in the centre of the defensive loop from the north of Hasselt to the French positions upon the Meuse and Sambre, or cover Antwerp and the Belgian left wing, thus preventing a turning movement of the Germans along the frontier of Dutch Limburg.

The position became clearer when the news arrived of the advance of German army corps across the Meuse; and of the great concentration that was proceeding in the neighbourhood of Hasselt. It was still supposed, however, to be largely a movement of cavalry.

Heavy fighting was reported on Thursday and Friday at Haelen. Friday was a brilliant sunny day. It was full of surprises. We forced our way along rough lanes, to run suddenly into small reserves or batteries hidden from the aviators under trees. At times we had to move hazardously with one wheel in a ditch, as we passed lines of munition waggons, or crowded along jogging lines of cavalry. We skirted behind the trenches from Louvain to Diest, and thence to Haelen.

Haelen, Friday.

Fine fellows these little Belgians; intelligent and quick to respond. Rather weary now and strained, for many of them have been already long in the field. Day and night they have been fighting at odds of ten to one. They are men who think, and they fight the better for it. A desperately exhausting fight it is. Dispersed in parties over their immense front, they have to rush and concentrate the moment that one of the small squadrons of German cavalry, infinitely scattered, is signalled. Some, thus, have been in three separate engagements on one day, in different places. But they are as stout-hearted as ever. Tell them what the world thinks of their heroism, and they smile with half humorous pleasure. Tell them what we guess of the nearness of their allies, and they crowd round with an unselfconscious delight that is not for themselves but for their nation and their cause.

As we pass among them, in their "rest" moments, it is easy to make them cluster, laughing like a crowd of alert boys; but in the fighting line they are tense as wires, with a concentrated sternness that the Germans are learning to respect.

"I have sabred two this morning," a powerful, brown-faced lad, a cavalryman, who had just finished bandaging a German dragoon with a broken back, said to me drowsily to-day. This was in a cottage at Haelen.

Haelen, the wrecked village, where the Belgians have proved their heroism in the field, has to-day been the scene of renewed attacks and unshaken resistance. The Germans, who lost 2,000 out of 5,000 in the two days' fighting, had to fall back upon the base of their army corps at Kermpt; but they have been pressing, pressing forward again in overwhelming numbers.

The fields outside the village are a terrible sight: littered with dead men and horses, broken guns, twisted lances. In one trench alone twelve hundred Germans were being buried, and the harrow was passed over the brown scar as soon as it was filled in. Cottages burned and black with shell fire, with dead cattle in the sheds. There were furrows where the shell had ploughed; and trampled heaps in the crops and among the bloodstained roots, where the charging horses had been mown down in masses.

Among the fragments of leather and helmets were a number of scraps of letters and postcards, carried by the soldiers in case of death, and a German collection of sacred songs for the campaign. These things are better left as they lie, and it is unwise, in running between rival armies, to risk carrying "mementoes" of battle. One very touching letter, however, that I found here, was carried home by a friend, and as my translation has already appeared, it may be reproduced:

"Sweetheart,

Fate in this present war has treated us more cruelly than many others. If I have not lived to create for you the happiness of which both our hearts dreamed, remember that my sole wish is now that you should be comforted. Forget me. Create for yourself some contented home that may restore to you some of the greater pleasures of life.

For myself, I shall have died happy in the thought of your love. My last thought has been for you and for those I leave at home. Accept this, the last kiss, from him who loved you."

A German biplane hovered overhead as I examined the positions in the field. I was anxious to make sure of the German line of advance. I drove forward over the village bridge, the scene of savage fighting and bombardment, but still just standing, and unexpectedly found myself behind the fighting line, facing a renewed German advance. Every house in the village was wrecked and looted. The street was littered with broken bottles and remnants. The church tower was gaping with holes: the Belgians, too, had had to use it to train their guns upon, during the German occupation. The walls still standing were pierced for rifle fire.

As we moved across the long-contested bridge and up the broken bullet-scarred street it was to the sound of cannon. Waggons bringing up fresh ammunition poured past us. On the stones under the walls knots of soldiers, too weary to shift their feet, lay sleeping during their hour of release from the front.

At intervals round the battered church wall came the stretchers, with the still more quiet dead.

I had visited three field ambulances along the line from Louvain during the day. Now for the fourth time I was admitted to the improvised ambulance rooms, well knowing what I should find. For the Belgian remains true to his civilisation. The wounded German prisoners, as they came in, were treated with just the same care, their death dignified with the same respect as that of our own friends. And yet the stories that are told of their cruelty to the peasants, and sincerely believed by the soldiers, are terrible. "But"—said a little rough, unshaven peasant infantryman to me—"we are men who feel. Whatever our enemies may do, we shall continue as we have begun—to the end."

I was even allowed to speak to some of the wounded in their own language. Not one had a word of complaint. Poor fellows, they all believed they had been fighting against the French! I think two of the finest men I have ever seen were a Belgian corporal and a German private, who lay dying to-day of bullet wounds, in half-burnt villages a few miles apart. In the cottage yard a peasant woman, with four children round her, who had seen her house sacked, was making coffee over a wood fire for the wounded Germans.

But the air round us was overcharged. The Belgians had been surprised in some woods as they advanced from the village this morning. They had lost heavily. Now they were holding the position well, but the Germans, in spite of losses, were closing in. Their advanced firing parties were at the moment within 300 yards of the village. At any instant their cavalry, whose lances and helmets lay mixed with smashed bottles about the village square, relics of the past day, might sweep round the defence.

All of a sudden one of the changes of mood common to nerves at such crises came over the soldiers about us. The faces hardened. We were under arrest. The fact of my talking German to the wounded, a mistake I learned to avoid later, was sufficient to brand me a spy. I had taken the precaution to translate each sentence to the sergeant in charge, but he denied it when I referred to him. Men in the "war state" are hardly responsible. I was taken, by the sentries, past a barricade, held by infantry with Maxims, to the headquarters. The major commanding, furiously issuing orders, sending out supports, etc., from the parlour of the last cottage in the street, was too occupied to give me full attention. "I have the right to shoot you: you ought to be shot, of course," was all he had time to exclaim at intervals. After a hurried, unsatisfactory talk I moved outside, and waited, among sullen faces. And I could see, a few yards off, the little sunlit glade of trees, where the Belgians were moving and firing, as they covered the entrance to the village.

An important prisoner was hurried in, and then away in a car. In the bustle some change occurred. Another major was in command. A tall, scholarly-looking man, utterly incongruous in such a scene, shouting abrupt orders in a cultivated voice. At last he had a moment for me. "I am perfectly satisfied; but we are in war. You will, I hope, excuse my forbidding your advance; in fact, it is impossible: the enemy command the road: good day"—he bowed me out with my guard. Immediately only sunny faces round us again; but still with the fixed, absent eyes, that tell of danger, close and realised.

It had not been my wish to advance further. In fact, the car was already turned, ready for a race back if the Germans broke in. We waited for a few more minutes to laugh that look out of the eyes of our friendly soldiers. Then we moved slowly back along the line of ruins, the traces of death, that made but a single battlefield of the fight of to-day and the fights of two days ago. We zigzagged through the sleeping soldiers, stretched unstirring on the cobble stones. The roar of a German aeroplane passed again over our heads; and the firing sounded nearer, both to north and south.

As I circled towards Diest, the roads were choked with munition and reinforcements. A column of infantry wheeled to take up a position in a beet-field on our left. A squadron of cavalry in the brown busby clattered past to head off Uhlans reported on our right. The village streets were barricaded with waggons; but the crowds of anxious, waiting women, boys, and children laughed and chaffed back at us as we waited at the barriers on the roads for a gap to be made for our passage.

Supports, and more waggons, and the constant rushing cars of officers. The orchards were full of cavalry horses, many of them captured from the Germans. The waiting soldiers grinned as I remarked on the fact that some of them were wearing the boots of German prisoners, even German regimental breeches. The Belgian mobilisation had to be carried out in two days. Many of the troopers have had to complete their kit at the German expense.

An officer swung into the car. He had come out of Liége to "rest." He is one of the only two survivors of the party of seven who fought hand to hand with and killed the seven or more Germans who rode into Liége to assassinate General Léman. "We watched them riding up the street; they were waving a white flag. My friend said, 'They have just killed a sentry.' We fired—thus; and they fired; and their four officers fell; and the others we killed; but only two of us were left."

As the sun set, long processions of Red Cross waggons, followed by lines of trudging assistants, and some priests, blocked the roads.

The troops were moving back into cantonments. A Division was being sent back to "rest." They swarmed over the fields and surged round the car for news. Through the wire entanglements, and over the trenches and bough-fortifications pressed a host of women. A number of wives and mothers, who had come long distances for a last sight—some of them had walked over twenty miles to find the right quarter—were thrust at us enthusiastically from the roadside, and the car was filled so as to save, if only a few of them, the twelve miles of tramp to a railway. Many had carried heavy baskets of provisions; but the troops are so well fed that they were not needed. Delicate, educated women, they waved courageous farewell to their husbands, private soldiers with serious sensitive faces, men of the learned professions, and poured into my ears the stories of hardship that their men were undergoing.

As we passed, the towns seemed full of silent women waiting for news. Small bodies of troops moved out now and again across the market squares to repulse approaching Uhlans.

At one town we traversed, Louvain, the King was in council with the staff. At Diest a huge crowd was acclaiming a joyful report about the English, that sent us, too, on our way with very particular reason for cheering.

In the last run in, through the dark, we were again made useful: this time to convey a special mission to the War Office in Brussels.

The Germans entered Diest soon after we left.

This was the beginning of the great German flood, that lapped like a slow tide from Hasselt, to Haelen, to Diest, and bursting upon Louvain in the next days, poured irresistibly across Belgium.

[CHAPTER IV]

Namur and the French Lines

The news of the evening was that of the battle at Dinant: the great drawn battle that distracted attention from the launching of the bolt of the main German advance from Hasselt, north of the Meuse. Even the layman could see the result must delay the French design—if it was their design—of joining up with the Belgians to cover Brussels. It was vital, if Belgium was not to be abandoned, that the French should get up in time. Early the next morning I forced a way once again to Namur, with the hope of possibly reaching Dinant, and, if not, of finding out the real strength of the French in the region round Namur. One road was still open.

Namur was under the cloud of that silent nameless panic that is more terrible than tumult. It is not found in the fighting lines; only in the threatened civilian towns occupied by military headquarters in face of the enemy. Nerves strained to snapping point find their only vent in black suspicion. As a stranger, to catch a passing eye is to challenge insult or arrest. For two days I was the only unofficial visitor in the town. I was arrested five times. I could not sit for five minutes at my window without hearing the tramp of civic guards or police on the stairs, coming to interrogate me. My room was searched twice a day for wireless apparatus. On the second occasion I pointed out, sarcastically, that the small drawer of the wash-hand stand had not been searched. It was never left unexamined again! There was no definite news of advance, but absence of news is the worst trial to civic nerves. Fear was in the air. But it was restrained and silent. A lifted voice in the street was followed by a little noiseless rush of people. On the second day I did not venture a hundred yards from the hotel, to avoid the wearisome arrests and interrogatories.

Namur, Saturday.

Under my window the crowds are waiting round the station for news. The trains are practically stopped; there may be one to Brussels to-morrow. Only one road to the north is open; the others are closed, completing the circle of fortification. Yesterday the aviators were dropping bombs on to the line opposite. To-day the town is quiet, but humming restlessly. The thunderstorms may have checked the pestilent persecution, or possibly the Germans now know all they need.

South of us, on the Meuse, the two northern armies, French and German, are facing one another. They were in conflict all yesterday, and there is no reason now to keep silence about the positions. The scouting Uhlans, whom I touched at Eghezee and east of Wavre, have done their work. The main body of the German Army Corps, supposed here to be the 4th, possibly with the 10th in support, appears to be moving definitely against the French to the south of the fortress....

All day yesterday, in a sanguinary battle, they were trying to force the passage of the Meuse north and south of Dinant. A squadron of French Dragoons was surprised beyond the river and destroyed. There are the wildest reports as to the losses of the Germans. An eye-witness of the attempts upon the Anseremme Bridge described to me the Germans as swept by the guns, as they advanced in their usual columns, and unable to fall as they died, so close and massed were the ranks.

They were repulsed at the time, but they are returning in force. They have began an attack upon the fort across the river at Davre. The armies seem to be advancing north-west into the great angle of the Meuse at Namur, coming into touch with the Belgians and French along the semicircle from Huy to Givet.

In a lonely little village south of Namur to-day, where I shared the deserted street with a few sad-faced women and half a dozen cripples and old men, the landlord said, "This is the 15th: our feast day. I usually have hundreds of tourists; to-day you are alone; we are waiting for the great battle. To-night?—to-morrow? Who knows?" As he spoke, and we waited, the thunderstorms kept rolling up the lime-stone gorges, and we listened, each time thinking this was the beginning.

I slipped down from Namur this morning along the front of the French lines on the Meuse. In all the villages deserted houses; walls pierced for musketry; wire entanglements; and the picturesque windings of the river scarred with trenches, and stirring with hardly-seen troops. It was a curious change to leave our little friends, the dark Belgians, and meet the moving patrols of French Dragoons, large, splendid-looking fellows, bronzed and hardened since I saw them leave Paris but a fortnight ago. But they cannot show more heart than our worn little Belgian comrades, as they held back the overwhelming numbers in those desperate engagements I watched yesterday, at Haelen and Diest.

Where the cliffs on the far side sink to the river the roadside hedges on this bank were lined with smart, keen-looking infantrymen, by hedge and tree and trench, leaning across walls or behind trees, with rifle ready. Hardly an eye turned on us. For on the hills across and to the south the Germans have been sighted. The attack may come anywhere, any time.

We got within a mile of Dinant, well within the entrenched lines; past barriers and fortified bridge ends—where the soldiers lay ready under screens of sheaves. They were naturally suspicious at first of civilian dress, but always courteous. Journals delighted them. One smart dragoon, being shaved under a bough-shelter, musket on knee, received his first wound in jumping up to ask for a newspaper, and to cheer for England.

At last came the final block. "Impossible to proceed; no despatch-carrier even may pass." Infantry were clustered about us, keenly watching the other bank. The shimmer of the light blue cavalry uniform stirred and glittered up the steep lane behind us, hidden and ready to charge and sweep the bridge clear.

As the car raced back along the lines, even those who had chatted on our first passing, or turned to salute, had barely a glance for us. Something was in the air. The most talkative of the captains who had questioned us looked at our passing with only the absent inward look familiar now on the faces of men going into action. The dragoons moved restlessly along the road in quick patrols, carrying news of the enemy sighted in the woods on the opposite bank. The road is exposed in all its length, and the car was so conspicuous that I expected every instant to be fired upon from the trees opposite. A long train of guns wound out of Namur and blocked our entry.

What they awaited may come to-night, or to-morrow. We should hear the guns here if the siege had begun in earnest.

Later.

A bomb has just exploded on the line opposite my window. The glass roof of the station is shattered.

The sound of guns has begun from the forts on the east.

Namur, Sunday midnight.

The French were engaged last night at Dinant, even before we were clear of their lines. An attempt of the Germans to cross the Meuse at Bouvignes was repulsed with loss.

The Belgians this afternoon repulsed an attack at Wierde, east of Davre, the fort on the defences of Namur across the Meuse, where an unsuccessful attempt was made yesterday.

I was out on the lines of the defences to-night with some friendly soldiers, sharing their supper. I may say the commissariat of the Belgians is excellently managed. The soup was first-class, and some of the wives, just back from a Sunday visit to their husbands, tell me their extra burden of food and wine was not needed by the men. One woman, white with dust, had walked thirty miles in search of her son to-day. In the end an officer was found to send her forward in a Red Cross car.

Even as I supped in the dark on the outworks with those soldiers, one of the strange mood changes that are getting familiar in the war atmosphere took place. Sullen suspicious looks, whispered questions round me. I withdrew quietly but quickly. (When we hear the true story of the fall of Namur, this too may have to be taken into account. Soldiers conscious of their terrible losses, a populace half-believing itself deserted by its allies. French troops sent in, and again hurriedly withdrawn. The Namur army cut off from its main body, from the king, and the command.)

This evening the 28th Belgian Regiment marched in in triumph from its successful engagement yesterday at Lothain.

Only the First, Second and Third Division have yet been engaged. They have borne alone the whole weight of the recent fierce engagements in the front, from Namur to Diest. To-day the Third, here, is being replaced by the Fourth.

The Fifth and Sixth are still in reserve. They will probably be kept to cover Antwerp, if Brussels falls. The Sixth is the élite of the Army. The Belgian shooting so far has corrected the inequality of numbers; but the Sixth Corps contains the chosen marksmen. The Germans continue to shoot low.

The trains this evening stopped running for the reason that a column of 150 German cavalry has been located across the line and along the road down which we ran this morning; and the Belgians have been preparing a surprise for to-night. In fact, there is an additional, more serious and most satisfactory cause, almost laughable in its performance to anyone in the secret, of which again I may not at present speak. (French troops were being run in concealed by various devices from the sight of the airmen. They detrained outside the town. A regiment of "Turcos" however marched in in the evening, and produced the first applause I had heard for a long time).

The aviators have stopped dropping bombs. The soldiers, at least, believe to-night that "the King has sent an envoy to say that a hundred prisoners will be shot for every bomb dropped in the unprotected streets." Only girls and old men have so far suffered from the inhuman practice.

I have spoken with two witnesses of the encounter about Dinant yesterday. The chief struggle raged round the ancient citadel which was taken and retaken. The French guns smashed the pontoon bridges as soon as the Germans had built them. The permanent bridges were swept as the columns advanced. They were mined, but left standing, acting each as a death trap. The impatience of the French African troops, the "Turcos," who are spoken of with bated breath, is said to have prevented the success of a crushing enveloping movement, a yielding in the centre to pour in on the flanks, which the French could only partially execute.

Pitiable stories are told of the corps-á-corps charges of the "Turcos." The stories are becoming so universal that there seems reason to suppose that the German "machine" has not been trained to meet the bayonet. The Belgians have already learned to count on the bayonet as their strongest weapon in meeting the Uhlans.

The battles at Haelen would suggest that the tubular Uhlan lance is less serviceable than the Belgian bamboo. It is certainly ineffective against the solid bayonet. At Haelen I found a large number of "buckled" and cracked lances along the line of the German cavalry charges.

The losses yesterday about Dinant seem to have been immense. Rumour speaks of anything between 20,000 and 40,000 put hors de combat from the two opposing forces. It is probable from accounts that the number must be reckoned in thousands. A peasant from a village below Dinant told me that when he was called back from the fields "by the noise" he "came over the hill to see the Meuse running red-streaked with blood."

Allowing for the Ardennois emotion, there seems no doubt that the fighting was savage and terribly costly, and that one of the many good reasons that stopped our passage just short of Dinant was the fact that the dead were not yet removed.

In this war both sides are very rightly concealing their losses. The relatives are separately informed, whenever it seems fit; and no lists are published.

To-night it is reported among the soldiers, and possibly therefore with truth, that the Belgians have just blown up and abandoned one of the smaller forts. "The reinforcements came just a day too late; the 4th Army Corps should have been up yesterday."

The German corps lately engaged at Haelen and Diest in the north are reported to be moving south-west from their base at Kermpt and Hasselt. If this is true, the movement indicates a general advance preparatory for the battle of the three (four?) armies.

We know the next move, so far as one side can know it, but it must be left to explain itself. A few days, and the board in this corner will have been disclosed.

Monday, 7 a.m.

The surprise joke for the Germans, referred to above, has been going on all night.

Regiments of the 4th Belgian Army Corps have also been detraining all morning. Fresh, brisk-looking men, curiously pallid compared with their black unshaven comrades, who have been in the field all the week. Better booted and equipped, having had more time to mobilise. Odd boots and German prisoners' breeches, belts, and trappings have become common sights in that hard-worn division. A little captain at Diest was wearing blue breeches, one brown riding boot, one regulation black, a kepi with two bullet-holes through it, and a green Chasseur coat too small for him. "What would you? I have been in five fights, from Liége to Diest; the Germans sacked my lodging on the night at Haelen. I fought them there without a coat. We were seventeen in the corner of the wheat, cyclists; at night I went back with the two other survivors, and found my bicycle. One is a philosopher! one must be gay!"

The Second, Third, and Fourth Regiments of the Line have suffered most. The Second have lost a large proportion of their numbers.

The proportion of officers killed is very large; this especially among the Germans, owing to their massed formations and the distinction in uniform.

I saw a letter last night, found on a German officer, bitterly complaining of the want of preparation, absence of proper scouting, and reckless waste of life in their mass attacks.

Little credence can be attached to stories of an enemy's savagery. But a circumstantial story has been twice told me by men in different companies that Belgian prisoners were placed in the front line in the engagement at Landen; and that the Belgians fired low at first until their friends had fallen, shot in the legs. I give it only for what it is worth.

There is no doubt that the battle in which the Belgians lost most heavily was an early engagement on the Tirlemont lines, where, in the dark, two regiments of Belgians mistook their line, and fired on each other. Both lost many men. Under present conditions this must occur. The airmen are asking that no aeroplane shall be fired upon. They suffer from their friends.

Namur, Monday night.

Have you seen a fight between a hawk and a rook, or a hawk and peregrine? That, or something like it, took place over the open square by the station this afternoon.

An aeroplane appeared out of the west; it soared over the railway against the cloudy sky, stooped, and suddenly, as if struck, shot with a steep volplane on to this side of the Meuse.

There was a rush of cars and crowd. But before it touched a second aeroplane appeared like a speck in the clouds. It rushed down with extraordinary rapidity, in sharp dipping planes; hovered, as if looking for its prey, swooped at the tower on the station, and with extraordinary audacity wheeled twice above it in exquisite descending spirals. The flight of the first had brought a crowd of soldiers and Civic Guards on to every salient roof, and the circling challenge of the pursuer was followed by a regular salvo of musketry.

For a second it wavered: I could see the wings riddled with bullets. Then it steadied, dipped for a rush, and soared away magnificently over the surrounding heights.

Two minutes later the first aviator emerged from the station, a distinguished-looking white-moustached French officer, clearly in a fearful temper at the wrecking of his machine by the over-zealous Guards. To make quite sure of some one, they had raked his descent also with roof practice!

Hardly had the crowd quieted, when there came another rush. Two fine-looking German officers, in the uniform of the famous "Death's Head" Hussars, were raced up under guard to the station. The crowd, with the remarkable restraint that is distinguishing the Belgians, watched their transference in complete silence. They had been brought from the north, where a German column has to-day cut all communication with Brussels.

For two hours this morning we heard the sound of cannon. Armoured cars, fitted with mitrailleuse wheels, have been running through the town. There have been also several mitrailleuses drawn by the famous dog-teams that can get up any hill-side.

No trains are running. The station is full of weeping women and children, who came yesterday to see their soldier husbands.

The motor-cars stand in their ready ranks, along the river-side. The Government purchased 12,000 at the start of the war from garages and private owners. Their use has changed the whole conditions of transport. The chauffeurs were sleeping in them. I had breakfast this morning with five of them in a little restaurant. A small boy gave me his Belgian badge. "If you get out alive," said his father, "our colours at least will have been rescued from the Germans."

(Namur had now become almost impossible for a stranger. The guns could be heard bombarding the distant forts. There was every chance that delay would mean being shut up for a siege, with no chance of getting news out, in which fortune had so far favoured me. Only a miracle—and Léon—had kept my car from being commandeered. I arranged to run out at dawn on Wednesday, and if the Germans were across the road on the north, to loop west by Charleroi and take our chance with the French army.

In the last evening I made an excursion on foot out of the town on the north, and, clear of the fortifications, had proof of the French being engaged in the direction of Gembloux. This confirmed the hope that the junction with the Belgian army had been made in time, and that the Germans would be forced to fight, against an army in position, in that region.)

Wavre, Wednesday.

I have just reached here from Namur—now a city of rushing crowds and anxious waiting.

All through Monday night the French were pouring into Namur, detraining outside the town. They were concealed under provision bags, etc., from the aviators. By day or twilight they arrived with helmets and cuirasses masked. The Spahis and Turcos had a warm welcome. Even a low cheer from the silent crowds, that washed from point to point like a restless sea.

All Tuesday morning, too, the fresh Belgian 4th Army Corps moved in and through, to replace and reinforce the well-tried 3rd. In the evening the officers dined and took coffee in the square; to speed off in motors later to their posts. There was even a little music and singing in the hotels. The Belgians know their anxious, lonely task is almost over. The rest they will face in good company.

This morning we came out, probably only just in time to escape the siege. Later, the Uhlans were across the line and road. A dispatch carrier was found shot by the roadside an hour after we passed.

Meanwhile the allied armies would seem to have been taking position in a vast semicircle from Diest to Namur, curving by Quatre Bras and Wavre. They have been choosing their ground. Not Waterloo this time—that is too close to the possible distractions in Brussels—but on a splendid field. It is broken ground, veiling the strength from the enemy.

Yesterday the long line of troops, drawn gradually in, stiffened. An engagement took place near Gembloux. The Uhlans were hunted back by the Cuirassiers. I was out near in the evening on foot, north of the city, and heard the operations going on.

Taking advantage of the lull, we got out of Namur early this morning, taking cross roads and lanes in front of the French and Belgian lines, and dodging the Germans.

The French were advancing, pushing the Germans back. We were soon involved. The face of the fields and low hills near Sombreffe was alive with moving troops—columns of cavalry, light guns moving into position, long snakes of infantry scattered up and down the wooded slopes. An extraordinary sight in the sun, among woods and trees.

We worked back through the lines. The deserted châteaux were occupied by various headquarter staffs. Occasionally the country and the closeness of troops opened. We ran among patrols of the light-blue Hussars. Anxious to get us out of the way, they passed us on courteously, with an occasional "arrest." They were clearing the last Uhlans, the remnants of those which were dispersed yesterday.

An officer warned us in a lane on a hill. "Wait here," he said. "We have run down some Uhlans in those woods." We waited half an hour. No movement, sunny fields; nothing to be seen. Then suddenly, over a field, out of the wood, a rush of four horsemen, and the snap of a few shots from the far side. The next instant a running report of invisible rifles. Three horses fell. The fourth man fell from his saddle, and was dragged through the stubble. One of the other three got up, leaving his horse, walked a few paces, and fell. A grim sight in the summer fields.

Finally we were shepherded through to Mazy. Here we were blocked for two hours by advancing columns, Belgian guns and French cavalry. Slowly through the village (no peasants or children showing now!) filed regiment after regiment of French cavalry—glorious fellows. With their dulled, glimmering cuirasses, helmets covered in dust coloured linen, and long black manes brushing round their bronzed red-Indian faces, they are peculiarly savage-looking, in a splendid sort of way.

Some had slight wounds, scarf-bound; a few the remains of the garish flowers, given them in some cottage last night, still stuck in their breast-plates. Several were pallid from loss of blood. All covered with dust and their horses foam-flecked.

As they passed, four abreast, some of the files were singing together. The singing was subdued and hoarse, from tired throats. The sound had a curiously wild, barbaric note. I remember nothing like it except the beginnings of the Dervish chant, or the short moan of the Indian war-song. They all had the stern, fighting set of the face, the eyes sullen and looking only at the distance.

A few glanced round and smiled grimly: the sudden gleam of teeth and the flash of light in the eye, breaking through the mask of bronze, redness and dust, had a startling, almost shocking effect.

The majority had no glance for us; set faces and a rustle and stir of black, rusty plumes as the horses shifted uneasily at the car.

Now and again officers, and white-moustached colonels. A few noticed us, and gave various orders. Two general officers were specially noticeable in their subdued glint of armour. The one, white-bearded, slightly bent, but with a hawk's eye and a perfect seat and a great brown Irish hunter. The other like a Viking, with a white, drooping moustache. After inquiry of one of his staff, he rode up as he passed, with a dignified slight inclination. "You may pass on, sir: Englishman—and friend," he said.

A line of Belgian artillery; then the lighter horses and trappings of Lancers; finally cyclists and a detachment of the Red Cross and ambulance.

They all passed up the lanes, out on to the hills, with a sort of rustling, intent silence; for there are no drums or music in this war.

For many of these great bronzed men, with here and there a fierce negroid African, we were the last link with the life of towns and civilians. A few hours, perhaps a day or so, of the sight of the stir of troops, of the empty country and the sound of war, and they will be lying in the long nameless trenches in the fields, with the harrow already passing over them.

South of Namur also the French are advancing across the Meuse, pushing forward on the offensive. There may soon be a straight diagonal of the Allies from Maastricht to Belfort.

The Belgians are waiting quietly, and, now, more confidently.

[CHAPTER V]

Louvain and Waterloo

The encounter with the French regiments was reassuring for the time; but as I returned north of Wavre, it became again doubtful whether the link had really been made. News of the steady flood of Germans pouring by Diest upon Louvain met me near Brussels. To get an idea of the relative pace of the German advance I determined to return that night towards the Belgian left wing and discover for myself, if possible, the chances of its holding out.

A few hours at Brussels about noon were enough to convince me that it would be well now to keep outside and moving independently. The atmosphere of calm which the admirable organisation of the town had preserved so long, even in face of the near approach of the German cavalry on the south-east, was beginning to break down. The mistaken policy of silence was having its inevitable effect. For want of news, rumour was spreading. The Germans were said to be twenty miles, fifteen miles, ten miles away. Treat people as children, which has been the policy of the authorities in this war, and you will force them in the end to behave as children. If ever a population deserved to be taken into confidence it was that of Brussels. But it was now being treated with less and less trust every day. Papers were being suppressed; official communications grew less frequent and more obviously doctored. Our own authorities contributed by a curt request that all British correspondents should be ejected. How undeserved this was I was able, as not of the profession, to appreciate. In view of what was common knowledge, as to plans, positions and news, among scores of British correspondents in Brussels, their tact and loyalty were deserving of high praise and increased rather than diminished confidence.

I moved my base, therefore, to Waterloo, to a friendly little hostelry that had already proved useful on our long skirmishing runs. In the late afternoon another excursion to the south-east left little doubt that the main German advance was progressing on this northern line. Reports of German cavalry met us in the villages. But what was happening to the Allied armies? On the return I met, and followed for some distance through the lanes, a regiment of French infantry, who were making a forced march to join the Belgians. It hardly seemed possible, therefore, that the evacuation rumours which I had heard in Brussels could be true.

To help towards a solution I started again, this Wednesday evening, towards Louvain, and ran through the town at dusk.

I had come to know Louvain very well, in the days of my interviews with the Headquarter Staff. There was a little restaurant at the corner of the odd-shaped "Place," facing the magnificent Hotel de Ville, where I could watch the constant stream of cars and columns passing in and out of the cordon that surrounded the church, which contained the Commander-in-Chief, and sometimes even the King. Occasionally a British Staff officer would cheer me with the sight of the well-known uniform. There were always Belgian army surgeons, in the brown cap, ready for a gossip, restless horses with unhandy recruit riders, for amusement, and walks through the deserted picturesque streets, for a change to the eye. In a week or so I got to know it well, its quaint atmosphere of a mediæval university town charged with the restless electricity of military occupation, the uneasy mystery of an uncertain fate. And in another week or so—it was not.

I passed through it, or rather round it that evening for the last time; past the lines of soldiers sleeping under the station shelters, and the sentries with their handkerchief puggrees. I saw it only once again, the next night, by the glare of a few burning houses on the outskirts, beacons of the Belgian retreat and the German occupation.

Wednesday.

Beyond Louvain progress in the dark was very difficult. I failed to get the news I sought, but I heard something of the enemy. I made my way during the night down behind the Belgian lines at Geet Betz, with a returning officer as guide.

Here the advanced German right wing, chiefly cavalry—Uhlans and dragoons—has been trying to turn the Belgian left.

They have been repulsed once to-day in the attempt to cross the river, and suffered enormously owing to their advance in column formation.

The Belgians, too, have suffered considerably from the mitrailleuse, but have held their entrenchment with remarkable courage.

The Germans returned to the attack, and were expected to renew the assault to-night.

It was too dark to see or be seen in the undulating fields, but voices from the trenches and the movements of horses, and the occasional rush of a military motor, acted as signs.

Taking the chance of something happening within hearing, I made myself comfortable under some bushes near an open track leading through the lines of entanglements—so far as they could be located. There was an occasional sound of distant firing, outposts skirmishing; later in the night a single whistle and the sound of wheels grinding on tracks. What may have been a battery moved up on to a rise in the ground—seen as a shadow—about a quarter of a mile to the south. Here they seemed to stop, for there was silence again.

Another long wait, and then the sound of cantering horses—some four or five—coming by the track from behind, inside the lines. Were they friends?

They had passed me, and were in a line with the slight hill to the south, when little sparks of flame—half a dozen or so—glinted for a second out of the shadows.

There was the slight "phit" of bullets through the leaves, and then the purr of a maxim. The canter broke into a sharp gallop down the track, following upon a single shouted order.

Some heavier piece of ordnance coughed a short distance to the left. A reply came from far in front. A rattle, or rather an uneasy stir and crackle, like a wet bonfire, moved along the lines, and died away in the dark to the south.

The sound of the horses' feet stopped—probably they had turned on to softer field-mould. And then silence again.

But this time the sense of human presence stayed with me. The darkness seemed strained and alive with tense expectancy.

The nights are short, and their cover shorter.

I had to be content with only the sound-picture of the night skirmish.

During the darkest hours before dawn we got back to Waterloo. On the southern edge of the battlefield itself I lay in the open, waiting for daylight, and listening for the sound of cannon commencing that should declare whether the Allies had really advanced, and were occupying some position that might still save Brussels and Belgium.

Waterloo, Thursday Morning.

A Shakespearean interlude this in the great Tragedy. Pistol, and Bardolph—what you will: the old story of the talkative coward!

I have come up here, for the first hours of quiet in three weeks; to escape from the constant excitement of wondering whether the next pair of galloping lancers approaching across the fields are friend or enemy; to avoid the agitated nerves of towns, where nine-tenths are spending their time in trying to discover whether there is any truth or personal bearing in what the last tenth lets them grudgingly know.

With all consideration for the necessity of secrecy, the thing is being overdone. No one can be got to believe that there is really no war going on; and for want of proper information imagination is beginning to run riot and nerves to snap.

A little company of peasants, fine, independent, sturdy folk, now safe behind the great lines of armies. A jolly company, full of joke and laughter, but with an eye all the time on the distant hill of the great battlefield.

And one stout, serious leader of the local Civil Guard, who spends each night beside the lion on the mound. Not alone; for three blue-bloused peasants with muskets wait at the other corners: a curious recall of the Great Duke's statue at Hyde Park Corner!

The last time I was here the three, aided by four girls, with their hair still down, from the farm, plotted against the braggart's peace. He dare not climb the 100-foot mound alone in the dark. But he wanted straw, for a warmer seat.

In his short absence the three others were hidden in a barn by the girls. The door shut. In the dark, alone, the leader set out to climb the mound, thinking they had gone on.

He talked loudly to himself. Then he began to call their names, "Pierre! Jean! Georges!—GEORGES!" He reached the top to find himself alone with the lion and the stars.

A wild yell: the two barrels discharged in panic: a head over heels descent: and a huge roar of laughter from the men and girls who had crept out into the road, prolonged till it became the hysteria of overtried nerves.

Then, the growl of cannon in the far distance, and all suddenly were silent.

Unwilling to precipitate, by my night attack, the arrangements of the peasants for escaping by their windows if the wandering Uhlans arrive, I have come down the battlefield to sleep, in a coat, under the stars.

The night is extraordinarily still. Twice the cannon have droned for a short time far off. A nearer shot, that roused a momentary shouting and movement in the sleeping village behind me, must have come from some nervous or sleepy Civil Guard.

Earlier in the night there were lights winking far away, towards Genappe; probably French contingents signalling.

And the meteors have been falling, criss and cross, in the summer warm darkness, over the darker cloud above the waiting armies to the east.

1815; and what were the men then thinking who lay rolled up in their cloaks to sleep their last night on the fields about me?

Ninety-nine years; and what are the still greater hosts of young and old men thinking, as they lie in their coats watching those same stars, only a few miles away from me, just behind that darker band of trees?

A century! And the only difference, that the one great army, that then faced up these slopes against us, now lies protecting us; in its turn ringing off a hostile army that then slept and stood with us as friends.

A century of progress! And what to show for it? The armies of four nations slightly shifted in their relation to these great plains, like spokes on a turning wheel.

Firing has recommenced, very faintly, in the distance. Not more disturbing than the harsh cry of a night-jar in the wood beside me.

For these few hours the terrible, unreal atmosphere of war, when every inch of earth threatens a surprise, and no moment seems real till it is past, has been absent. Night, and the stars, and quiet, have seemed like old friends, renewing a quiet of thought, restoring proportions.

I have been writing by the light of matches, under a coat.

Now the stir of wind before the dawn has passed. A few dogs are barking. And a shout or two tells of the Civil Guard changing their watchmen.

I can see to write in the grey dawn. Beyond my feet, out there on the hills, brain and sinew are again alert, and plotting cunningly to kill.

How much of hope and life and promise may have ended in darkness before the next night covers this sudden glow of sun?